Beginning on December 15th, residents in New York City will be able to rent a plug-in vehicle through Hertz. This we knew. The Connect by Hertz program will slowly branch out to include cities such as San Francisco, Washington D.C., the state of Texas and London, England by the end of next year. In addition, Hertz will consider extending the program to include college campuses in North America and even aims to include China by the end of 2011.

The rental process is actually quite simple, but due to the limited availability of plug-in vehicles, Hertz will restrict access to members only. To become a member, simply sign up at the Connect by Hertz site. There is a variable fee associated with joining, but it's a small price to pay to get a crack at driving the vehicles of tomorrow. After paying your membership dues, you will need to submit some info and wait for the rental agency to contact you regarding vehicle availability. While the company hopes to have up to 1,000 plug-in rental vehicles available by the end of next year, only 20 will enter the program by mid-2011, so we suggest that you book your reservation ASAP.

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Anonymous

Anonymous

2 Months Ago

And I think there are a lot of conventional cars that are overpriced and underfunctioning. Conventional cars have had decades of refinement to improve function, and orders of magnitude higher volumes to reduce price, and there's still no more than 5 or 6 current ICE cars I'd be happy buying! EVs are too immature and too low-volume in order to have a model for everyone at this time, but give the technology a little time, and more competition to produce a wider choice, and I expect EVs appeal to a lot more people.

Anonymous

2 Months Ago

I'm totally renting a Volt, and later a tesla for a day! But since it says they charge by the hour, it's probably crazy expensive. When it settles down and i can do it for a day on less than $150, i'll bite. If it's something like $50 an hour then eat it.

Anonymous

Anonymous

2 Months Ago

Other thing :

''While the company hopes to have up to 1,000 plug-in rental vehicles available by the end of next year, only 20 will enter the program by mid-2011, so we suggest that you book your reservation ASAP''.

That means 20 in June and then 980 more in the next 6 months!? Ambitious!

Anonymous

Anonymous

2 Months Ago

One thing that's not made clear in this story is that "Connect by Hertz" is Hertz' already-existing car-sharing system (a la Zipcar). They're just adding some EVs to it. Assuming charging infrastructure is available in the cars' designated parking spots (and it would have to be for this to work), this is a great use of EVs, since by definition these cars are rented for short trips.

Anonymous

2 Months Ago

Very clever of Hertz.
1. Most people renting an EV to try it out, wouldn't otherwise have rented a car that day.
2. People who end up buying an EV may rent from Hertz at a later date when they want a gasoline car to take an extended road trip.

Anonymous

2 Months Ago

This is a great way to get more people exposed to electric cars and get them interested in a much more effective way that the automakers individual attempts to inform consumers about their products and give them wheel time. If 1000 electric vehicles are changing hands multiple times a week, that's a significant amount of exposure and could get tens of thousands more interested in purchasing an EV. And if other rental companies follow suit, we could be talking hundreds of thousands. I'm excited :)